Our medic in the Antarctic, Robert Conway, reports on the logistics of a quick
journey to the bottom of the earth.

The South Pole was first reached on the December 14, 1911 by a group of Norwegian explorers led by Roald Amundsen. They travelled more than 1,400 miles, with the use of dogs, to the pole and made the return journey to The Bay of Whales via the Axel Heiberg Glacier. One hundred and one years later to the day I stood in exactly the same spot. Around four weeks later, on January 17, 1912, Scott and his team found the pole with a Norwegian flag on it. “Great God! This is an awful place” Scott recorded in his diary.

The team were exhausted and turned to make the return journey home. Scott had used differing forms of transport on his trip, tractors, horses and eventually man hauling. His team dwindled as the elements took their toll and after descending the Beardmore Glacier, he made it close to their food cache before passing away. “For God’s sake look after our people” was his last diary entry. May they rest in peace.

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Scott’s physician on this trip was a man called Edward Wilson. He was a medical student at St George’s Hospital Medical School, where I also studied, before he contracted tuberculosis. He was prescribed “clean countryside air”, and returned to the Cambridgeshire. His story inspired me to travel to Antarctica in 2006 and led me to this spot six.

Much of our initial time on the ice was spent packing and allocating medical kits to different teams on the ice: guides, explorers, mountaineers or scientists. One day, while in the throws of yet more lists, I came across Ernest Shackleton and Scott’s medical kits. Our kits differ slightly. I have Aloe Vera used in the healing of frost bite, Shackleton had gold-beater’s skin. This is a parchment-like dressing prepared from sand shark intestine, used in the manufacturing of gold foil and to heal open sores and frost bite. He had cocaine tincture, dripped in the eye to cure snow blindness, I had painkillers. Edward Wilson lists camel hair, borate and hazeline, none of which I knew without internet research.

I also read that Shackleton’s physician, Eric Marshall, also doubled up as a cartographer and surveyor. This is true of Wilson, who also was an artist and led the science on Scott’s expedition and not to dissimilar to doctors today. The first expedition I ever got on was due to the fact that I could also muddle together a basic website.

Explaining about altitude sickness on the flight to the South Pole

Thinking about it, I am unsure whether my non-adherent dressings, iodine and aloe vera would have saved any of Scott’s men from their deaths. Scott documented that Wilson spent hours tending to Oates’ wounds while lancing blisters and treating with antiseptic. The management of this has not changed drastically, but logistics are now much better and I think that we are just a little bit closer to help 100 years on.

So how did I get to the South Pole? Well I wish I could tell you that I spent hours upon hours skiing in inhospitable conditions, but to be honest, it was to fulfil one of my roles here as the expedition doctor. This is to accompany tourists making a once-in-a-lifetime trip by aircraft. Not quite how I planned it I admit. If you do not feel like the legs will take you, are not fond of camping or just are not so good in the cold, and have a high dispensable income, then this is defiantly the trip for you (www.adventure-network.com). I am not saying that it does not come without risk as you are still very remote – hours away from tertiary care – but you have a doctor with you and it is as safe as can possibly be.

The day is long as we lie in a different time zone to the South Pole. These are worked by your entry point. For us it is Chile (+3hrs GMT), for the South Pole base they enter through New Zealand (+13GMT). This means leaving at 1pm to get there for 9pm South Pole time.

We fly in a Baslar BT-67, which is based on a DC3, a beautiful old long tailed twin prop plane. It is un-pressurised and so from the first thing that day you are at around 3,600m. At this altitude the air is a lot thinner, there is less oxygen to breath and so one of the risks is altitude sickness. It is not uncommon to feel some of the effects such as headache and fatigue. I keep a close eye on everyone during the five-hour flight, checking oxygen saturations with my portable pulse oximeter.

The Baslar is based on 1940's design of the DC3.

We land on the ice at the South Pole and are greeted by the smiley and welcoming American team from the Amundsen-Scott base. They kindly invite us in for a tour and it just so happens that the shop is open and we get to buy some souvenirs. After this they say farewell and we walk the 200 meters to the Geographic South Pole. Some people chose to meditate, others take photos, others called a loved one to say that they are standing on the bottom of the world.

I stand and smile. It is not every day that you visit the South Pole, regardless of how one makes it here. Before I made this trip I felt, as many of my peers do, that the only way to make it is to follow in the footsteps of those before us. But there are many reasons why people come here, and it is not just for the few scientists, or the hundreds supporting them in their endeavours: it is for all who chose to make this journey.

The trip back is uneventful and everyone is pretty tired. I double up as an air steward giving out some drinks and snacks. By the time we return to Union Glacier it is midnight, but still sunny of course. The sun at this time of the day sits behind Mount Rossman and sometimes drops just below the summit so making the temperature drop in camp. We are greeted by some of the Union Glacier staff and they have a surprise for us, a champagne meal. Wow.

En route to the South Pole at 3453 metres

This is still a rare journey to make, over 600 people reached the summit of Everest last season and about 1000 sailed to the North Pole but only a handful will make it to the South Pole. Summed up by one tourist, this is not only a life-changing experience but one of the most interesting journeys can possibly make – a final frontier.